When using a printer with a computer, a situation sometimes arises in which a print job is sent to the printer and it is later desired to cancel the print job. In some cases, the print job can be canceled from the computer. In other cases, it may be too late to cancel the job from the computer, and it may be necessary to interact with the printer in order to cancel the job.
Many printers have a “cancel” button that a user presses to cancel the print job that is currently being processed. The ability to cancel the current print job is effective and sufficient in many situations. However, the simple functionality of a cancel button can create frustrations in other situations.
One particular situation in which the cancel key sometimes creates frustration is when a printer is shared among users of a workgroup. In situations such as this, it sometimes happens that a first user initiates a print job and that a second user later cancels the print job against the wishes of the first user. This might be done for a variety of reasons, the most likely of which is that the print job of the first user is lengthy and is holding up the print job of the second user, and that the second user has simply become impatient with the wait.
A similar situation arises when a particular print job requires some type of special print media that must be loaded manually into the printer before the print job can proceed. In situations like this, where a print job is stalled as it waits for a user to load special print media, it is possible for multiple print jobs to become queued, all waiting for the stalled print job. Users other than the user that submitted the original print job may have no interest in loading the special print media, and may instead simply cancel the stalled print job in order to expedite processing of their own print jobs.
In either situation, the owner of the original, canceled print job eventually makes his or her way to the workgroup printer only to find that his or her print job has been canceled. As a result, this user must make the trip back to his or her office, reformat the desired document, and resubmit it to the workgroup printer.
The invention described below alleviates some of the frustration that can be associated with situations such as those described above.